DESTINATION: SRI PADA

Location: Sri Lanka Most frequented by: Everyone! (It's multi-denominational)Sri Pada is the only mountain in the world sacred to four major religious groups. Oddly enough, it also happens to be nestled in Sri Lanka, a country ravaged by civil war for the past 20-plus years.Sri Pada is a modest, cone-shaped peak on an island in the Indian Ocean. At the top of the mountain, you'll find a 1,600-square-foot platform on which there's a depression

the shape of a human foot—a very large foot, about 1 yard wide and nearly two yards long. (See how carefully we avoided measuring the foot in "feet?") Buddhists believe the footprint to be Buddha's. Hindus think it belongs to the god Shiva. Christians claim St. Thomas left it there before he ascended into heaven. Muslims believe Adam made it after he descended from heaven (hence the mountain's nickname, Adam's Peak).

Despite the ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka between the Sinhalese government and Tamil separatists, hundreds of thousands of travelers of all religious stripes make the pilgrimage up the mountain each year. The climb up Sri Pada, which can take three to four hours, is marked by crumbling steps, hundreds of colorful butterflies, lots of leeches in the surrounding forests, and tea houses for breaks along the way.

In some places, there are iron chains to help out climbers who wish to pull themselves up. It's said that Alexander the Great left them behind when he visited the site in 324 BCE. There's no record regarding who Alexander believed created the footprint, but if we had to take a guess, we think he probably told people that it was his own. Muslim pilgrims perform the 'Tawaf' ritual around the Kaaba at Mecca's Grand Mosque.